Top Digital Marketing for Doctors Trends to Grow Your Practice
Once upon a time, the healthcare market was physician-focused, and you could build a profitable practice with a one-size-fits-all marketing approach. The focus was more on your ability to provide solid healthcare, and patients will find their way to your practice.
These days, the market is more patient-driven and highly competitive. Before making an appointment, patients go online to find out more about your practice and the doctors.
For patients to give you their business, you must utilize digital marketing for doctors. It doesn’t matter how long you have been practicing medicine, your primary goal is to grow your practice by bringing in more patients and retaining the current ones.
However, the busy schedule of doctors and the digital marketing options available may have made it hard for you to select where to start and how to measure the marketing performance.
In this article, I have compiled eight proven digital marketing tips for doctors to book new patients. Let’s dive right in.
Digital Marketing for Doctors Table of Contents:
- It all starts with your website design
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Local Searches
- Content marketing is the engine for SEO
- Utilize Google Ads to reach appointment-ready patients
- Invest in quality video ads for OTT advertising
- Grow your email list
- Consistent Video Content
- Reputation SEO is essential
1. Digital marketing for doctors all starts with your practice website design
By now, you already know that the first place patients go when looking for a practice to book an appointment is the Internet. So how do you get found?
You need a well-designed website. 57% of people say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile. 88% are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience.
Your medical website serves as the patient’s first point of contact with your practice. It’s your chance to leave a lasting impression.
Your medical website is essential to attaining your business objectives and building the foundation for your digital marketing strategies, including SEO and content marketing.
A mobile-optimized medical website design should give patients comprehensive information about your medical services using treatment pages.
These pages must clearly outline the procedure, what to expect throughout, the doctors in charge, the ideal candidate, and contact information. This information helps win the patients’ trust.
Click here for some tips to help you create a patient-centric medical website.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Local Searches
It’s no secret that patients no longer enjoy traveling very long distances to see a healthcare provider. They want to work with a nearby doctor.
Local medical SEO is a crucial part of digital marketing for doctors because healthcare is a local service. Patients prefer to work with a doctor nearby, and medical practices depend on getting patients in their local area.
Without a well-implemented local SEO, a million potential patients may visit your website and not convert to patients because they are not within your local area.
If you have a multi-location practice, your local SEO for doctors should focus more on location pages and Google Business Profiles to deliver top rankings on “near me” searches.
When patients search for “orthopedic urgent care spartanburg sc,” the highest rank results and Google My Business “Local 3 Pack” map are significantly impacted by proximity, relevance, and reviews.
Also, you need to optimize your citations and listings to boost local medical SEO. You can improve your local SEO by uploading current and reliable information about your medical practice to popular online directories like Healthgrades, WebMD, Yelp, and ZocDoc.
The updates you do on these directories may be just your name, address, and contact. What happens is that when patients in your area search for treatments, these directories come up with your details in the search results.
To get more out of your local SEO, see how we helped Tennessee Orthopaedic Clinics increase their organic website traffic.
3. Content marketing is the engine for SEO
Now, you have a medical website and local SEO strategies in the pipeline. The next thing to implement in your digital marketing for doctors is healthcare content marketing.
Most patients believe that the healthcare industry can be unwelcoming, scary, and complicated. With a solid content marketing strategy, you can close the gap between the healthcare industry and the patient, making it more relatable and less intimidating for them.
Healthcare content marketing is one of the most effective ways for doctors to engage their patients and develop credibility and trust in their practice. Content can be articles, images, videos, podcasts, and ebooks.
You can showcase your expertise and abilities using valuable content like blog articles, social media posts, press releases, case studies, webinars, and more.
With content marketing, you can create original and helpful content to dispel myths and provide your patients with accurate information to make them trust your practice.
Your content can also show Google that you are an authority in your niche, and that can help you rank high in search results for relevant keywords and phrases. Additionally, content marketing can help you improve your local SEO rankings if you write about issues specific to your area.
4. Utilize Google Ads to reach appointment-ready patients
It’s no secret that most doctors want to bring new patients to their medical practices every month. Like most practices, your focus may be on getting new patients for some specific procedures and treatments.
Therefore, you need a customized marketing strategy that allows you to zero in on the said procedures and treatments when patients are looking for them in your area.
Google ads for doctors allow medical practices to do just that by ranking you at the top of a Google search for specific keywords and search terms related to your high-revenue procedures and treatments.
Google ads for doctors are the first 3-4 search results a patient sees at the top of a Google search when they type in a search query, for example, knee pain treatment near me.
If you set up Google ads for “acne treatments in Texas” and a patient searches for a similar phrase, there is a high chance of the patient converting because of their search intent.
This patient is actively looking for a solution compared to someone scrolling on other social media platforms.
Additionally, you can use Google Ads to show your ads on third-party websites you believe your potential patients visit. For instance, you can target medical websites like WebMD or sites relating to a profession if that industry is associated with skin problems.
The Intrepy Healthcare Marketing team is a Google partner and expert in creating and optimizing Google Ads for doctors.
See how we used Google ads to generate an average of 750+ phone calls and 250+ self-appointments monthly at around $2.68 per conversion for Tennessee Orthopaedic Clinic.
5. Invest in quality video ads for OTT advertising
As more people migrate from normal TV to streaming platforms, your digital marketing for doctors should include investing in quality video ads for OTT advertising.
According to Statista, OTT users in the U.S. alone can reach 313.4m by 2027 — about 90% market penetration. Most people stream a video for over an hour every day.
What is OTT?
OTT is digital content delivered online instead of through traditional broadcast TV or cable boxes. It allows viewers to stream video on desktop, mobile, smart TVs, Chromecast, Amazon Fire Sticks, Roku, gaming consoles, tablets, and other devices through dedicated apps and websites.
OTT platforms include Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, Peacock, Pluto TV, Paramount+, Tubi, and Apple TV.
On OTT, people decide what they want to watch and when they want to watch it without fitting into a big distributor’s schedule. You can benefit from this by adding OTT ads to your digital marketing strategy for doctors.
OTT ads (or streaming TV ads) are the ads that are displayed within video content when people are streaming the content.
The three main ways to purchase OTT ads include:
- Buying directly from platforms or publishers (like Netflix).
- Buying through a middleman reseller.
- Programmatically, which is the most popular, fastest, and easiest way. You buy automatically through digital auctions.
Remember, the testing process will cost more when starting with zero data. However, the expenses will drop as you collect more data, optimize your campaigns, and get better targeting.
6. Grow your email list
Building an email list is one of the best tactics to employ in digital marketing for doctors.
Email marketing is an effective way to promote your healthcare practice to new patients and stay in touch with the current ones regarding their upcoming appointments, annual checkups, test results, prescription refills, and other reminders.
Growing an email list allows you to generate additional revenue for your practice without spending on ads because you can use it to promote repeat business.
For example, you can upsell a service or product, drive repeat procedures, and send newsletters, promotions, and updates to encourage patients to visit you when they need a healthcare provider.
Set up a system on your website to grow your email list using a lead form.
You can do this by offering a discount or free stuff (like access to a video, PDF, solid resources, etc.) to potential patients and have them submit their email addresses to get it.
You can also collect the email addresses of your current patients.
Promote the discount or free stuff on your social media pages or through ads and encourage people to sign up to get them. Don’t forget to inform them that they will get frequent email messages from you.
As you start doing this, make sure to have a way of segmenting your list (i.e. create different groups) so that you can send them emails relevant to them.
You don’t want to send emails about upcoming appointments, annual checkups, and prescription refills to patients who have never used your clinic before for any reason.
Having your email list in different groups (segments) helps you understand who gets those types of email messages and who gets mostly educational emails that encourage them to visit you when they need care.
7. Consistent Video Content
In 2023, what is a better way of making your medical practice more relatable and trustworthy for patients?
VIDEO CONTENT!!
Any digital marketing for doctors that doesn’t include video content is losing out on a vital asset. Compared to other content types, videos are the fastest way to create a connection with your potential and current patients.
Videos are an effective way to showcase your practice, team, and expertise. This can help you improve patient engagement, build authority, generate qualified leads, and foster patient retention.
You can also use them on your website, emails, Youtube, and social media pages.
Despite the numerous benefits, many physicians and healthcare providers avoid videos because they believe video production is time-consuming and expensive.
However, with simple video software tools like CaptureMD, that’s no longer the case. You can now create a video with a few clicks without editing skills.
Here are some video ideas you can create for your patients using CaptureMD:
- Patient Testimonials: Testimonial videos increase brand reputation and trust. Feedback from patients about their experiences after receiving medical care is an effective tool to attract new patients.
- Educational videos: Make helpful videos that explain patients’ conditions better or a video that describes the services you offer. For instance, you can create a straightforward video describing bronchitis and its best existing treatments.
- Team videos: Patients are humans just like you. They relate better with people they are comfortable being around. In the intimidating healthcare space, sharing team videos can help improve patients’ relationships with your practice.
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Find out the most common questions your patients are asking about your field on social media or anywhere else and make videos answering the questions.
8. Reputation SEO is essential
Reputation is a crucial part of digital marketing for doctors because it’s one of the first impressions your potential patients use to judge your healthcare practice.
A report shows that 71% of patients use online reviews as the first step to finding a new doctor. It further proves that 43% of patients would leave their insurance network for a provider with good reviews.
Also, Google favors good reviews as it helps your local SEO. They seek patient reviews of the care received at your facilities and will extensively consider these reviews when determining where you will appear in local search results.
Therefore, you must create a system to generate new reviews on your Google Business Profiles (GBPs) and other online healthcare listings to increase your SEO rankings.
If a patient searches for “knee replacement near me,” Google Business profiles with reviews that include the keyword “knee replacement” will appear in the map results.
So it’s crucial to collect positive reviews that mention the particular procedures you’re trying to rank for in search results.
If your goal is to rank as high as possible, you need to have a system for physician reputation management. Automation is highly preferred.
Before using our agency, in 2019, Infectious Disease Consultants of Georgia generated 19 total reviews. In 2020, we generated 211 new patient reviews for them in 180 days. A 1,010% increase in new reviews!
Wrap up Digital Marketing for Doctors
Digital marketing for doctors continues to evolve. To grow your practice, build credibility, and attract qualified patients, you must constantly update your marketing knowledge and employ unique marketing strategies tailored to your practice.
I hope you found these eight proven digital marketing for doctors tips helpful. Remember, whenever you add a new digital marketing campaign to your arsenal, test, test, and retest one more time to ensure you are correctly optimizing all aspects of the campaign.
If you need support with these medical marketing strategies, book a free video practice assessment with us. We would love to chat. Thanks for reading!
